Tips for playing in hardcore rules mode?

August 18th, 2007, 21:17

I just got back to NWN2. Still playing with hardcore rules. Still annoyed with the game. Characters just ignore spell effects; I just failed a quest because the person I was supposed to escort cheerfully walked into my blade barrier — *after* the battle was over. Qara keeps throwing fireballs right into the melee (OK, that *could* be construed as roleplaying, I suppose).

Originally Posted by Ubereil
Have you turned spellcasting off on Qara? I've found that you have to manually controll spellcasters, or they go nuts… OK, I've found this about ALL kinds of characters!

Übereil

I have; in fact, if Qara is in the party I usually control her and let the others do their thing. My main character is a priest, though, and he does some pretty damn stupid stuff if I let him, too. But thanks.

I absolutely hated Qara and left her out of my party(except where the game decided I wasn't allowed to) but my player character was a sorc, so it was even less of a loss. I don't think there's really a solution other than micromanagement. Have you tried any of the patches that are supposed to have improved the party AI?

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
I have the latest official patches. Are there other ones?

No, those are what I meant. I played before they came out, so was hoping they might offer some improvement. Perhaps the expansion will help, but that remains to be seen. If you need the spellcasting support, you might use the wizard—he at least runs out of fireballs.

Hmm, there is no need to turn off spellcasting anymore. The AI has been fixed, no NPC will ever use aoe spells unless they are alone for miles. On my last playthrough, only a few weeks ago, I played through on hardcore without turning any AI off and I never had a problem. It's been tweaked a lot, I basically only used my main character (dwarven defender) and let the rest of the party tag along, attacking randomly. There's only a few fights in the game now that requires NPC management (such as the dragon).

If you want things to be easy, just make a solid party (example: Khelgar, Qara, Construct, Elanee, main char). Khelgar can solo most fights in the game, both as a fighter and as a monk.

General tip though: Never use damage over time AoE spells (ranging from blade barrier to various clouds) - NPCs will walk straight into it. Personally I only use buffs, heals, direct damage and aoe spells that only hit enemies (chain lighting etc). Better safe than sorry.

Edit: You can also select all characters at the same time now with a single button, or do a classic strategy drag-selection(such as in BG1-2). These features are available on mouse buttons 3 and 4, or 4 and 5 by default. You can probably change the key mapping for these new features if you want to.

My tip is to take full control of the whole party and disable the AI. You can take general AI commands from the voice menu (default key V) and put them to the quick bar and give directions like follow me and attack closest when need be. Multi select is also a decent way to guide your party, but the characters seem to run towards the same spot which can cause pathfinding problems from time to time.

I don't know how anyone can play without turning puppet mode on for all chars. I almost never use AoE DoTs either. Mostly because they seem pretty weak compared to DD DoTs. More and More I mostly use my casters for buffing the hell out of my melee chars. I'll often soften the groups of enemies up with some AoE first, then watch the great cleaves fly.

TBH, once you get stoneskin the game is ridiculously easy. It bothers me that none of the enemies in the game ever seem to use it. The Red Dragon Fight can be a decent challenge, but all you really need is to make everyone immune to fire. keep stoneskins and haste up, and heal the tank(s) if nescessary.

I have recently been trying out Night Howls in Nestlehaven module, and have been pleasently surprised at the quality and level of polish. If you start the mod at the suggested level of 9, then you should find some very challenging combat. You need to think a bit to win. Apart from the author's apparent inability to comprehend the correct use of an apostrophe, the mod is excellent. The Subtelty of Thay also looks quite good, but it needs polish.

In general, getting stoneskin for anyone but the mage himself has changed the balance a lot in D&D. In previous versions of D&D, Stoneskin only buffed the caster. Of course, back then there were other issues to worry about (such as fighters with enough mage levels to buff themselves etc).

All in all I feel stoneskin is slightly overpowered for a relatively low level spell. The same goes for the classic magic missile, since it is one of the most practical spells around as it is virtually spammable.